I'm serving a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I leave for the Texas McAllen mission on July 7, 2010 and will be speaking Spanish.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Greater happiness than you have yet experienced awaits you on your mission.

What Bishop K is leaving?! Que triste!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He's just following where the Lord is guiding him I guess :) At least I got to see him down here in Brownsville before he left haha. Do they know who the new bishop is? That is exciting about Zach! How fun! He has quite a journey ahead of him. Being a missionary is something indescribable... you just have to go through it to know. He will be great! I remember reading on my call letter "greater happiness than you have yet experienced awaits you on your mission." It is so true...something that you realize gradually but soooooo true. I'm so happy here :)

That is fun! You decorated eggs with the exchange students? Awesome! Did you hide some with money too? I missed our cookie crisp filled eggs this year :) I loved opening our cereal eggs and eating them for breakfast! Actually I didn't miss them until just now - I think as you get further into a mission, you just don't have time to miss things... haha. But that sounds like a blast! We ate your Cadbury eggs that you sent :) I like the mini ones better because they are just the right size. For Easter the investigator we have been working with for a while came to both the SPANISH and ENGLISH and the baptism after church. He was there from 9am-5pm, just like we were. He was suprized at what a big program it was to have a baptism. He said to Sister Lichfield "Wow this is different. In the army we all just lined up and were dunked under - in and out in 5 minutes." haha

After church, a member invited us over to dinner with the Elders. It was DELICIOUS! Ham, mashed potatoes, and carrots...felt like home :) I'm not used to all this American food! She gave us those chocolate bunnies afterward... I ate half of it on the way home and was feeling pretty sick after... but chocolate is soooooooo good!

Okay now that I just spent a paragraph of my precious email talking about food... haha... let me just tell you how grateful I am for the Lord. I make so many mistakes each day but His mercy and atonement are always there waiting as I repent. A neat experience we had this week was talking with an older man, probably in his 70's. He doesn't have teeth and when he smiles with his little Mexican moustache it is so cute! But anyway, he told us that he has been trying to find the true church all his life but he just hasn't found it. Everytime we come by he says, "Sorry girls it's just not a good time right now, another day." But he is such a talker that we'll be there for an hour each time - so we just ignore that by now and start teaching haha. We taught the restoration and why he needs to be baptized again. He then went back and thought about his Mom. He told us the story about how she always said to them growing up "I will NEVER change my religion from Catholic. I will never change and neither will you." Then he said later on when she was 55 she ended up changing churches. Later on he asked her why she changed after all and she told him, "I never had a relationship with God when I was going to that church... I didn't talk with Him or know who He was until I joined the _________ church" and then he paused to think and said, "I think it was called something like 'The Church of Jesus Christ of the Last Days'..." When he said that I felt the spirit SO strong. His mom found the truth and made the change a while ago and now he is too. We explained to him "Manuel this church is the very same church that your Mom joined." Ahhh it was AWESOME! At the end before we left he so cutely said "Don't wave the victory flag yet, but I just might be joining your church."

I know the Lord works in our lives. I know things happen for a reason. I love you so much mama! I love you too family and friends that read this. God is real.